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The usage of robot waiters in the hospitality industry is growing, thus increasing the number of human–robot interactions in frontline services. Focusing on robot waiters in restaurants, this study aims to propose the social cognition (SC)–psychological ownership (PO)–customer responses (CR) model, while examining the association between SC, PO, robot anthropomorphism and CR.

The hypotheses of this study are tested using a three-step mixed-method approach that includes partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), necessary condition analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

PLS-SEM demonstrates the mediating role of psychological ownership on the relationship between SC, customer attitudes regarding being attended by a robot and revisiting intentions. Robot anthropomorphism enhances the relationship between SC and psychological ownership. NCA indicates that SC and psychological ownership are necessary conditions for the presence of favorable attitudes and revisiting intentions. FsQCA suggests that different configurations of the antecedent conditions lead to better attitudes and revisiting intentions.

Frontline hospitality robots need to be perceived as warm, competent, responsive and adaptable to customer requests to elicit positive responses. Managers should employ attractive robots displaying anthropomorphic features. Managers need to ensure that customers have some knowledge about robots before interacting with them. Managers should also consider customer heterogeneity and the context in which the robots will be deployed.

Based on the psychological ownership theory, this paper analyzes the relationship between SC, psychological ownership and CR. Anthropomorphism moderates the relationship between SC and psychological ownership.

Hotel guests are used to awarding marks out of ten for the service they receive but, at the USA’s first restaurant and hotel to receive double‐five‐star (Mobil) and double‐five‐diamond (AAA) ratings, the staff award marks out of ten on their guests. Every night, waiters at The Inn at Little Washington give each of their clients a mood rating as they enter the restaurant. If the mood indicator is below seven, it must be brought up to at least nine before the final dessert plates are sided into the kitchen. If it is below six, the rating is put up on a blackboard in the kitchen. Everyone who walks by that table lavishes warm vibrations, energy and smiles, in an effort to turn the mood around.

Based on the premiss that the extent of change taking place in health care presents a continuous stream of new ideas, concepts and management tools of which managers and staff must be aware and which they must possibly adopt. Draws an analogy with the difficulty of ordering wine, in that the wine waiter, who is the expert, could make it easier for customers to identify and choose their requirements. Offers a number of tips, including the development of staff and the retention of expertise in‐house, to help make effective use of the experts who can beneficially assist NHS managers.

Whereas the Minister of Labour (hereafter in this Order referred to as “the Minister”) has received from the Licensed Residential Establishment and Licensed Restaurant Wages Council the wages regulation proposals set out in the Schedule hereto;

Service tip is an optional gift that is given by the customers to the waiters (or any other service staffs) for their services. Although the service tips are given to the waiters or service staffs, many restaurant owners or managements take away such gifts from the service staffs. This paper aims to identify the relationship between tips retention practice (TRP) and returning intention (RI) of the British customers to the same Indian restaurants for dining once they know that such tips are retained by the owners not by the service staffs. TRP was further divided into positive TRP (service staffs retaining the tips) and negative TRP (owners or management retaining the tips). The study further used a moderating variable (Female Customers’ Role) to test the moderating effect on the direct relationship.

The author purposively selected 1,223 British diners who take dining services at different Indian restaurants and used a structured survey instrument to collect primary data from those selected respondents. The author used SPSS 25 for descriptive statistics and a covariance-based structural equation modeling through AMOS 25.

Based on survey responses and proper statistical analysis, it was revealed that a positive TRP has a significant positive relationship with positive RI, whereas a negative TRP also has a significant positive relationship with negative RI. The results further disclosed that such a relationship can be strengthened by the Female Customers’ Role, that is, female diners are particularly reluctant in returning to those Indian restaurants where they experience a negative TRP.

This is one of the few empirical research attempts that have tried to reveal the dining customers’ intention toward TRPs. The author expects that the study results will contribute to upcoming investigations focusing on TRPs and policies. The author further anticipates that the study findings will guide the Indian restaurant managements in shaping their TRPs and policies.

Many service employees rely on non-contractual voluntary customer tips as a major source of their income. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the relationship between the service employee’s cognitive evaluation of the tip (expectations-disconfirmation tip gap), affective state (AS) and displayed emotions (DE) toward customers in the workplace.

An experimental, between-subjects, scenario-based research design was conducted on 107 waiters in the US restaurant industry. A simple mediation model was first tested, before testing a more complex moderated mediation model that was developed to investigate if employees self-control (SC) moderates the relationship between the employees tip gap, AS, and DE.

An employee’s negative disconfirmation tip gap negatively influences the employee’s AS, which in turn results in negative DE toward customers in the workplace. However, an employee’s positive tip gap does not positively influence the employee’s AS, relative to the control. In addition, employees’ SC does not moderate the relationship, which suggests that when employees experience negative tip disconfirmation they may openly violate the service provider’s display rules and service scripts, and display negative emotions toward customers in the workplace.

The scenario-based research design was limited to self-reported perceived levels of SC and DE. The scenario was also limited to one country and one tipping context (i.e. restaurants). Future studies could compliment these findings by conducting both qualitative studies, and survey research that relies on actual tipping data or re-enactments of actual service encounters.

Service managers not only need to manage display rules and service scripts to influence employee DE, but also need to manage employee tip expectations, especially when employees expect to receive tips that are greater than actual tips (i.e. negative disconfirmation). Communicating and educating employees on customer tipping and what tips to expect should be central to managing employees who rely on customer tips.

Tipping has received very little attention in the services management literature. This study broadens the focus of tipping research in the literature by presenting a more complex expectations-disconfirmation tip gap model.

This research aims at creating a model that could explain consumers’ value perception of restaurants attended on Sundays in the city of São Paulo. The research was carried out in two phases. The first was an exploratory research – a focus‐group type with two groups of eight individuals each, whose objective was to discover the main variables that impact the value perception of consumers who attend restaurants on Sundays. Thus, a balanced Likert‐type scale was generated, with seven levels of concurrence. The scale was submitted to five experts for a theoretical validation and was applied to a nonprobabilistic sample pursuant to the judgment of 360 consumers with the same profile as of those of the focus group. Then, in a second phase, validation of the scale by the confirmatory factor analysis method was provided as well as the building and analysis of five causal models by the method of structural equation modeling and the five‐hypotheses test. The final model with a better adjustment (hypothesis 1) was composed of PRICE as an endogenous variable and ENVIRONMENT, SERVICE, FOOD, and HYGIENE as exogenous variables. Such conclusions allow the perception of the decision process in relation to restaurant selection in two phases: (1) when a group of restaurants is chosen, and (2) the moment when the PRICE variable takes over the role of defining the value offered by each restaurant, which will motivate the selection.

This study seeks to examine one of the keys to a successful restaurant – the waiting staff. Their backgrounds are investigated, together with the skills and expertise which they are expected to possess by employers and customers. This is compared to the training offered, so that recommendations can be made to the trade about the role of the waiter and waitress in the process of food enjoyment. A range of eating establishments are considered, and the views of the proprietors, their staff and customers taken, so as to offer the views of those involved.

Robot chefs and robot waiters have emerged in the restaurant industry. Based on the curiosity theory and the stimulus–organism–response paradigm, this study aims to understand the influence of robot restaurant attributes on customer behavioral intention before purchase.

Based on research data from 289 respondents comprising undergraduates, postgraduates and non-students in China, the theoretical model is tested via the partial least squares technique.

Food quality perception directly affects regular patronage intention, but it has no significant influence on experience intention. Service quality perception and high-tech atmosphere perception positively affect experience intention and regular patronage intention through the mediator of interest in robot restaurants.

Different from previous studies focusing on human employee restaurants, this study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the first to systematically investigate the influence of robot restaurant attributes on customer behavioral intention, and it finds that these attributes have their own uniqueness vis-à-vis influencing customer behavioral intention.

机器人厨师和机器人服务员已经出现在餐饮业。基于好奇心理论和刺激-有机体-反应模型, 本研究旨在了解机器人餐厅属性对顾客购买前行为意向的影响。

基于来自中国289名本科生、研究生和非学生的研究数据, 通过偏最小二乘法对理论模型进行了检验。

食品质量感知直接影响常客意愿, 但对体验意愿没有显着影响。服务质量感知和高科技氛围感知通过对机器人餐厅的兴趣作为中介变量正向影响体验意愿和常客意愿。

与以往专注于人类员工餐厅的研究不同, 本研究首次系统地研究了机器人餐厅属性对顾客行为意图的影响, 并发现这些属性在影响顾客行为意图方面具有其独特性。

机器人餐厅, 体验意向, 惠顾意向, 食物品质, 服务质量, 氛围

研究型论文